Levitt & Dubner's blog posts an email from a student who got kicked out of class for citing the research on abortion and crime.

Coincidentally, my law and econ students and I were discussing the same topic in class yesterday. (I use the paper in class and had just returned an exam with an abortion and crime question.) We were wondering aloud if one could further test the abortion-crime connection by looking at the public funding of abortion. Federal funding is generally prohibited by the Hyde Amendment, but, although I don't have precise details, I think there is (or used to be) public funding via Medicaid and that the funding varies by state and over time. Since the people who receive funding might well be folks who, in the absence of public funding, were the most likely to have "unwanted kids," it seems that examing the effect of eliminating public funding has on abortion rates and subsequent crime rates might be an especially useful way of testing the abortion-crime connection.

BTW, nothing in the previous paragraph should be taken I am pro-abortion or that I favor public funding of abortion. Doing so would be wrong on both counts.

ADDENDUM: For a different flavor of classroom tyranny, check out some of the exam questions that Jon Sanders has posted here (and the links contained therein).